


Extra, Extra

by princehwahwa



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: 1899 newsy boy strike, Depression, M/M, Period Typical Homophobia, guitar player! hongjoong, if you didnt read the tags prepare for angst, may contain historical inaccuracies, newsy boy! seonghwa, period fic, period typical racism, this is the turn of the 19th century obviously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21649228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princehwahwa/pseuds/princehwahwa
Summary: Welcome to 1899 New York City, a bustling town of musicians, artists, and most importantly, newsy boys. Park Seonghwa has been delivering and peddling out papers since he immigrated from Korea at sixteen where he met Kim Hongjoong, an immigrant guitar player attempting to break through the music scene. Soon, Seonghwa is thrown into the Newsy Boy Strike of ‘99 and has to keep his relationship with Hongjoong under the radar. As the protests rise, so does the probability of the media getting dirt on Seonghwa and his guitar boy. Will he be forgotten or will he break as the next headline?
Relationships: Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so this idea came to me after pics of ateez came out for the season’s greeting of course. it was literally an accepted FACT that seonghwa was a newsy so eventually, the pieces began to fit. thank you, jules, for the idea, thank you, ariel, for plotting with me, and my lovely beta. ily!! enjoy!!

**SPRING 1894**

Park Seonghwa had thrown up three times. He seemed like he was about to come up on his fourth one, the strange noises making his stomach muscles clench made his entire body grow weak, doubling over the side of the small immigrant’s boat to only come up empty. All it was was dry-heaving and hacking caused by the foreign swaying of a boat on waves, making Seonghwa’s knees almost buckle under him until he was on the brink of collapse. His elbow is perched on the lip of the boat, his hand holding up his head as his migraine seemed to intensify with every impatient hour that they had to travel. It was almost unbearable. Why did the port of New York have to be so far away?

It was rather harsh to think but he often cursed about how his nineteen-year-old brother had described his “better” life in New York. He was planning to get married to some woman from big money, Lanette. She had boasted about being a distant cousin to Rockefeller, which Seonghwa had honestly thought was a huge farce. His brother went on and on in his letters about a stable job at the paper mill, peddling off newspapers at the stands by the grocery marts, a decent house that had running water and electricity, not to mention how the neighborhood he was renting in was a majority of Asian and Latino immigrants, as well as a few African Americans scattered throughout. To Seonghwa’s mother, she took it as an invitation to pack up their traditional Korean lives and remold them into some new breed of American. Seonghwa hated it.

When Seonghwa’s brother was sixteen to Seonghwa’s thirteen, he had told him about a boy about two blocks down that was helping him learn English. He taught him the simple phrases such as “Hello, I am Hwa. I don’t speak English” and taught him a few curse words too, as most boys would do. But other than that, Seonghwa was totally clueless in this new urban jungle. He was tempted to give the immigrant ship’s captain one of his crisp dollar bills just to make him pull a huge U-turn on the Atlantic ocean so he could go back to his home country. What would he even do in America besides reside as a low-status alien of sorts?

As Seonghwa’s brain begins to short-circuit and half-convinced the teen to hop up on the ledge to complete the decaying process amongst the fish, there was a faint sound trailing away from the inner cabin, slightly familiar to the boy’s untrained ear. He had two options at the point: become human seaweed and startle his mother into a state of shock which would ultimately sadden his older brother until he became a bitter and depressed alcoholic until he himself decided to go the way of his younger brother and finds a shotgun bullet encased in his brain and ultimately end the Park line forever… Or he could let his curiosity wander and figure out the slightly muffled sound’s origin and identity. He had voted for the latter, not like there was interesting weather to see as it was overcast with grey clouds stretched across the atmosphere. Maybe that’s why Seonghwa’s bad mood was seemingly intensified but it was most likely a teenage-angst mood swing from his “happy fun time” of testosterone-fueled imbalance. Fun and grand for a sixteen-year-old literally uprooting everything that he knows for a stupid whim. Enough with that, it was time to figure out who or what was making that sound.

The journey to the inner cabin of the small immigrant’s ship isn’t necessarily a lengthy one, being that this was one of the ships leaning towards the smaller side, shaving off the several holding areas that were installed for the secondary boats were packed to the brim. Seonghwa would have to man up to take more than enough elbows and disgusted expressions to damage anyone’s pride. Luckily, Seonghwa was far from being prideful, being that his mother attempted to convert her entire close family to Catholicism or at least a half-baked excuse for a belief in a higher power but Seonghwa was refusing any brainless religious jargon that was being forced down his throat. If there truly were a God, wouldn’t He have done something to stop his mother from relocating them? Would He make the boat capsize and just make all of the people on the boat become the newest newspaper headline? Could He even do that if He loved every last one of his children? Seonghwa found it highly unlikely.

He hung the crucifixion cross necklace that his mother had found in an American goods shop, just a little north from their little inn, off of his belt loop, the pure silver chain forming a parallel relation with his thigh. His textured slacks formed subtle checkered patterns, courtesy of his mother buying extremely cheap fabric just to shave off a few bucks. The white top he was wearing was slightly flowy at the sleeves, Seonghwa feeling like if he did choose to end his life by the waves of the Atlantic, he would have appeared to everyone else’s eyes as an angel treading in the salty ocean. It was an interesting visual actually, maybe he would just go for an eternal swim.

As Seonghwa’s hands clamp back onto the ledge, about to use his growing upper body strength to practically catapult himself into that sinister ocean blue, the sound that he originally heard seemed to amplify in clarity. He thinks back to the stack of newspapers that rested undisturbed in the corner of his brother’s room and how when he caught Seonghwa rifling through the stack when the younger boy was merely seven years, the older of the two being double digits of ten, he had read him the headlines, one of them speaking of a new instrument called a six-string guitar. It fascinated Seonghwa and he soon grew to enjoy the craft of live music, being that that was around at the time. Sometimes there would be a miscellaneous telegraph of a show of exquisite sounds and Seonghwa’s brother would dig up enough currency to take his younger brother to the concerts that made him smile. Seonghwa remembers when he heard his first six-string guitar, the sound slightly jarring at first, being that it wasn’t that calm and soothing swell of strings that he was familiar with. Like the violins and cellos that he had witnessed, the strings on a guitar were plucked or strummed, and the guitarist would move his fingers along the neck of the instrument to produce different tones from the same string. Seonghwa was never a kid who needed to understand the mechanics of an invention, he was usually content with making absolutely certain that it could actually work, but this was entirely different. Seonghwa wanted… No,  _ needed _ to know how to play the guitar. It was his number one desire. Unfortunately, guitars weren’t cheap and neither was finding a decent teacher without having to sacrifice your limbs and organs so Seonghwa had to live off of unattainable dreams and wishful thinking.

Seonghwa wished that he could part through the crowd much like Moses split the Red Sea to do whatever God told him to do, Seonghwa only skimmed through that Bible story. Plus, the metaphor seemed appropriate for the situation so that was an opportunity taken well. Instead, Seonghwa had to speak to strangers and immigrants who most likely didn’t speak the same dialect or overall language to politely move. How do you say excuse me in English because Seonghwa had completely forgotten?

“Pardon me,” he spoke timidly in his Eastern Korean dialect, hoping that his motions of pushing past them would translate well enough to get them to shuffle just a little to form a slim path. That did the exact opposite.

“Watch it, yellow boy!” One of the immigrants from Wales practically shrieked, his heavy hands pushing against Seonghwa’s broad chest rather harshly, knocking into a family of women and girls that seemed to lose their footing. Seonghwa’s back was now resting on the wooden planks of the deck, now wishing that he was just a man overboard. “Get up!” Seonghwa stayed on the ground before the crowd began to close in on his slightly aching body. He was just a teenager, where was all of this rage coming from?

“Why are you being so cruel?” Seonghwa almost sobbed but kept the straightest face that his emotions could manage. All he was met with was quizzical stares because his English had disappeared from his memory and he was only speaking in his mother tongue. “Please, I just wanted to find the guitar.”

“What did you say to me?” The hefty fellow takes Seonghwa by the collar of his shirt, the fragile fabric taking two tears because of the man’s unkempt fingernails. His mother was sure to throw a fit. “Stop speaking in Chinese! I know you’re trying to start something and you’ll bloody well get it if you don’t man up and tell me what the hell you’ve been calling me!” Seonghwa could feel the tears starting to burn in his eyes, soon letting a few trail down. Seonghwa could no longer hear the sound of the guitar. He had failed his mission and he would probably die by the hands of a Wales man because he told the truth yet he was already deemed untrustworthy based on the color of his skin.

“Mama! Mama!” Seonghwa had never called for his mother with such terror shaking his voice until it was practically shattered. The saltwater tears began to drip off of his chin, his eyes unable to face the man who could most likely rip his head off his shoulder using only his teeth. This was the end.

“He’s calling for his mother because you’re scaring the hell out of him.” A voice soon broke the silence and the occasional sniffle from Seonghwa, being that his tears were running down his pale cheeks at a faster pace. “Just let him go and I’ll take him to her, free of charge.” It was all in accented English.

Seonghwa turned to where the voice was coming from where he was met with a boy who looked around the same age he did, give or take a few months. He was a lot shorter than Seonghwa was, maybe around 5’4” but that was just a rough estimate. His clothes looked expensive: wool and leather. His shirt was long-sleeved but was flocked with sheep’s wool, his slacks dyed black, a leather belt cinched around his petite waist. When Seonghwa finishes his body scan, his eyes lock with his and he swears that he had stopped breathing. This stranger was extremely attractive, his hair slightly overgrown until it grazed over his perfectly-sculpted eyebrows, his small eyes giving Seonghwa the illusion that he was stargazing. He was just perfect.

“The Chinese boy for the guitar then, Joong,” he chuckles, holding Seonghwa with a tighter grip, the two rips now joining together to form a long vertical tear stretching from the collar of his shirt down to his sternum. Seonghwa’s brain registered two words: guitar and Joong. Guitar was easy since Seonghwa had always wanted to play one so his brother taught him how to pronounce it in English. But the second word was strange. Joong. It meant “the middle” in traditional Korean so why would someone who didn’t understand Korean refer to someone with a Korean phrase?

The boy named Joong clicks his tongue, shaking his head cautiously. “You know the rules, Albert. My guitar is off-limits. I don’t have anything on me right now but if you let me speak to the boy you got there, maybe we can spark a deal.”

Albert thinks over Joong’s offer silently before nodding, letting Joong approach the boy who’s aura was radiating raw fear. Joong walks up to Seonghwa, waving a little timidly. “Hey, what do you have in your pockets? You want to live, right?” His Korean was perfect and Seonghwa could feel his chest tighten.

Seonghwa shakes his head “yes” vigorously, hastily reaching down to where pockets would be located on a pair of pants except Seonghwa’s mother didn’t sew pockets. “I-I don’t have pockets. You speak Korean?”

“I’m a Korean who’s well-traveled. Do you have anything of value on you?” Joong’s small hands soon brush over Seonghwa’s thigh, the terrified boy sinking his teeth into his bottom lip. That’s when Joong’s fingers tangle up in the silver chain that Seonghwa held up on his belt loop. “Is this okay? Do you want this?”

“No. I don’t believe in God.”

“Neither do I,” Joong girns, Seonghwa’s insides going buck wild in his body. Joong’s teeth are wide, his lips seemingly plush. Seonghwa took a mental note that he smiles with his eyes as well… Wait, why was he jotting down reminders about a stranger who was bilingual? Joong gets down on his knees, the images Seonghwa’s brain were concocting were things the boy had never thought of in his life. It was illegal, it was sodomy, it was… “The boy for his chain. Pure silver, blessed by the Pope himself, ask him yourself.” Joong’s smile had shifted from playful and endearing to cold and cunning when he addressed Albert. Seonghwa’s emotions were turned upside down, unable to properly pin down what he was feeling and put it in its box. He felt like he was going insane. Seonghwa didn’t even notice that Joong had already tied it from his belt loop, letting the chain drape aesthetically over his fingers. “We got a deal?”

“Deal.” Albert’s hands snatch up the chain, already letting it fall into his coat pocket. He pushes Seonghwa towards Joong, the taller of the two tripping over a raised plank, his arms wrapping around Joong’s neck as he falls into him. “Take your China boy and keep him away from me.”

“It’s okay, baby, I got you,” Joong reassures Seonghwa, the boy feeling a ruddy color fill-up the apples of his cheeks. He had to calm himself down before his body parts would abandon the legality of this. “Come on inside.”

“You have a guitar?” Seonghwa asks out of nowhere as Joong helps him inside the inner cabin, already spotting a six-string guitar resting on two wooden apple crates stacked on top of each other “Were you playing it earlier? I heard it on deck and I was going to come in to listen but then that man got angry and when it stopped, I got sad.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard a dialect like yours in a long time,” Joong laughs his grip around Seonghwa’s shoulder tightening. “What made you come to New York City? Wait, can I guess?”

Seonghwa hums, a little disheartened that Joong didn’t answer his questions but he still seemed nice.

“You have a relative who lives there who went on and on about how they’re thriving in the city so your family decided to move you down here so that you can all share that same success.”

“Yes actually. That was amazing. How did you—”

“What’s your name?” Joong cuts off Seonghwa, reaching for his guitar and taking a seat on the edge of the stack of crates, Seonghwa following suit. Joong rests the guitar on his knee, letting his fingers run across the fretboard, mindlessly strumming a quiet melody.

Seonghwa’s brain reminds him to answer the question before losing himself in Joong’s music of filler. “I’m Park Seonghwa. I’m sixteen, year 1878.”

Joong strums a little more passionately now, his eyes soon falling shut as he clears his throat dramatically.

“My torch seems to have burned out

With the fire I try to relight

But to no avail, I’m left stumbling in the dark

With everything I tried to be

I let my torch die

Just like my very soul.”

Did Joong just write a song using the translation of Seonghwa’s name? Who was this poetic genius?

“I’m Kim Hongjoong. Fifteen, year ‘78. Just a few months off, I see.”

Did Seonghwa really just fall in love with Hongjoong?

He did. But that’s okay, Hongjoong did too.


	2. Chapter 2

**SUMMER 1899**

Hongjoong was waiting outside his duplex, slightly off the outskirts of the slums most immigrants like himself resided. He had lucked out because of his father’s success, but just as the Kim family started lighting up as something amazing soon came to a halt when Hongjoong’s father grew tall enough to reach the strongest whiskey on the top shelf and the handgun in his sock drawer. Hongjoong could’ve cared less about his father’s death, he just got the guitar and the money. He fished out the carton of cigarettes in his pants pocket, selecting one lucky contender to be burned to ash, clenching it tightly between his teeth and flicking a match against the striker box. He closes his fingers around his smoke stick, tapping off the ash onto his patio.

A ringing of a bicycle bell chimes on Hongjoong’s street, his mischievous smile growing around his cigarette, the puffs of smoke slipping past his lips. He felt his entire body relax just by that one sound, as well as the playing card clamped by a clothespin on the bicycle spoke to sound like a low growl that was just  _ so  _ cool. As the sound moves closer, Hongjoong takes another short inhale, letting the nicotine melt his brain a little.

“Hongjoong-ah!” The boy on the bicycle waves wildly with his left hand, his right gripped the handlebar as he began to pedal faster. As the bicycle boy comes closer to view, Hongjoong can feel his chest feel warm and fuzzy, like butterflies flying around to tickle his lung. “I’ve got your paper! Two dead on the West side of Brooklyn!” That damn newsy boy.

“Hey, you’re going to wake up the whole neighborhood with that.” Hongjoong can no longer stifle back his laughter, shaking his head with a sigh of smoke inching upwards from the end of his cigarette. “I can’t believe you’re seven months older than me, Seonghwa-hyung. You still act like that little kid on Immigrant Departure #73E9. Unbelievable.” Hongjoong speaks with a kind smile spread across his lips, never faltering in the slightest.

Seonghwa pedals up to the dirt road leading up to Hongjoong’s duplex, beginning his descent off of the cheap leather seat, planning to exit off smoothly and impress his younger… That was not the case, not even close. Instead, his leather fabric boots had got caught up in the chain linked around the gears of his bicycle’s wheels, the older only having enough reaction time to widen his eyes as he felt himself lose his footing and dive face-first into the dirt. Luckily, Hongjoong’s reflexes had improved with his five-year experience of being with the bumbling twenty-one-year-old, already launching himself off of his patio to throw his arms out to act as Seonghwa’s personal net. “Some things just never change,” Seonghwa giggles, wrapping his arms tightly around Hongjoong’s back, using the strength in his legs so that he stood upright.

Seonghwa took a brief survey of the neighborhood, the only people awake enough to stand outside in the biting cold were Hongjoong and Seonghwa. Seonghwa had an excuse to be up at this hour, he was working and Hongjoong’s residence just happened to be on his route. Seonghwa has been a newspaper delivery boy, more commonly coined as “newsy” or “newsy boy” by the locals, since he touched down on New York City’s dock in that spring of ‘84 where he joined his brother to sell fifty-cent news. Granted, his pay wasn’t off the charts but it was enough to sustain his mother and him in the dirty slums of New York where most of the immigrants lived. He would race from the schoolhouse to the paper mill to sell the afternoon paper alongside his brother at the stand posted up by the main grocery market. Now that he was older, he just worked from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, three-hundred sixty-five days a year. Being a newsy boy was, quite literally, Seonghwa’s life.

“What are you looking for, hyung?” Hongjoong asks, his fingers grazing small and lazy circles over the curve of Seonghwa’s spine, earning a soft hum of appreciation from the older. Hongjoong takes his cigarette from his lips, pinching it between his fingers with a sigh. “There’s no one here.”

“I know, I know but…” Seonghwa turns his head around to get a full few of the houses one more time, making absolutely certain that no one was outside on their doorstep just to bask in the sunrise. When his scan proves all clear, he returns his gaze back on Hongjoong, his chaffed hands trailing up to hold his face, Hongjoong’s cheeks resting comfortably in Seonghwa’s palms as the older leans down to compensate their height difference, pressing his lips briskly against Hongjoong’s. It was short, but sweet, something that made Hongjoong’s heart stutter in his chest. “Making sure.”

“You can’t stand here all day dilly-dallying,” Hongjoong warns, returning his cigarette back to its original place against his recently pecked lips, taking a short inhale before speaking again, the smoke billowing in his words like a living smokestack chimney. Seonghwa gives his younger a small pout, Hongjoong taking his cigarette and pressing it against Seonghwa’s bottom lip, the oldest biting down on it with a slow breath inward, his finger-less gloved hand taking it in his fingers. “You have a job, hyung. Don’t make the boss man angry.”

“I probably won’t see you until tomorrow,” Seonghwa sighs, blowing his smoke from a small opening that he popped open in his lip. “Mama wants me to take her to the bank and help her make a withdrawal to pay the landlord. I’ll try to drop by though.” He grasps his cigarette with his thumb and index. “Did you want this back?”

“Nah, just put it out. Not much you can do with that little thing.” Hongjoong takes Seonghwa’s newsy cap, a burlap-fabric hat with a small brim and full headed body, just to ruffle up Seonghwa’s locks of deep ebony that he’d grown out to brush over his dark roast coffee brown eyes. Seonghwa lets out a soft giggle, his smile growing exponentially just by looking at Hongjoong. He could probably stare at the immense beauty of Kim Hongjoong all day long if he was given the opportunity, he was just  _ that _ infatuated with the twenty-year-old. Seonghwa didn’t have the words to describe his feelings about Hongjoong anymore, it seemed deeper than love or obsession or passion or any other romanticized term in anyone’s vocabulary. It was cliche, often spoken by a multitude of the heterosexual couples that practically shoved their relationships in Seonghwa and Hongjoong’s faces. If it wasn’t illegal, those boys would be all over each other, ultimately forgetting how to let go. But until sodomy was decriminalized, they were trapped with long glances and small smiles, even when they were in the comfort of their own homes.

Seonghwa drops the cigarette on the dirt, using the toe of his fabric boot to stamp out the embers, leaning back down to give Hongjoong a final kiss on his forehead. “It was just one more, I couldn’t help it. You just make me do things and I can’t describe it. I feel like I can do anything with you right next to me.” Seonghwa smiles, holding Hongjoong’s hands in his.

“Except give me my newspaper like you were paid to do,” Hongjoong grumbles, letting go of Seonghwa’s hands to walk up to Seonghwa’s bicycle, where he digs around the newsy boy’s paper basket for the cleanest issue he could find. He noticed Seonghwa’s freckled cheeks had found a ruddy-colored blush coloring his entire face, the younger letting out a soft coo before Seonghwa had the chance to apologize. “I’m teasing you, baby. Relax. But you really should get going. Will you be at your brother’s stand by the corner this afternoon?”

“It’s what I’m paid to do,” Seonghwa hisses playfully, his eyes rolling around in his head in annoyance, attempting to pull off an expression of such. Usually, he’s exceptionally terrible at appearing pissed off but he currently had to down to the relaxed position of his posture, the crossing of his arms into his chest, as well as the subtle furrow in his brow. If Seonghwa saw himself in the mirror, his trademark smile would most likely break his stone-cold aura.

Hongjoong notices almost immediately, his brain having an internal battle trying to discern if his older was being sincere or trying on his newest poker face. “Aw, baby, come on. Don’t be like that.” Hongjoong tucks the newspaper under his arm, the shorter using his arm’s reach to close in on him, his hand tilting up Seonghwa’s chin so that their eyes locked and by God, Hongjoong thought he was falling in love again, just like he did on that boat five years ago.

Seonghwa had now begun his process of drowning, usually a multi-step method to getting drunk off of Hongjoong’s mere existence. When the sun would start its ascent into the sky, barely peeking over the seam of the horizon, Hongjoong’s deep, chocolate brown eyes would melt into a sun-graced shade, similar to that of hazel. So what if Park Seonghwa had a job to do and he was seemingly losing himself in something as simplistic as a prolonged gaze into his partner’s gaze, the oldest refused to have it any other way. “Why must you always distract me by your mere existence?”

“Would you rather I break my neck from jumping off of the roof? That would surely fix the problem,” Hongjoong suggests, the teasing sarcasm just pooling in his mouth.

“Absolutely not,” Seonghwa seethed back. “Who would play me symphonies when you were gone, hm? No one plays like you.”

An awkward silence begins to fill the air, Hongjoong swallowing what seemed like a hard lump in his throat. It wasn’t like Hongjoong was some new thing in the music scene. He tried to be but in the end, he was just borrowing from his father who borrowed from the greats of guitarists before him. Trying to break through a business with something that strayed from the path of the normality, the original music formula. People were afraid of new in this decade, it was such a foreign concept to think of change to their little boxes of wholesome routine, it was seemingly terrifying. Hongjoong brought new equations of improvement but they were ultimately rejected with each year he stayed in New York, the public convincing each other that what Hongjoong was doing was the biggest fear factor among the ranks of America’s problems. Not to mention he was an Asian immigrant which did not aid Hongjoong’s case. At least he wasn’t a woman, except it would make his closeted relationship with Seonghwa so much easier. “Come on, you’re wasting time here,” Hongjoong warns, pushing Seonghwa towards his bike so that he could be on his way to his ten cents for the day. “I’ll drop by at noon, promise.”

“Alright!” Seonghwa chirps happily with a smile, bracing his hands on his bicycle’s handlebars, cautiously swinging his leg so that he was properly straddling the leather seat. “I’ll tell hyung that you’re coming!” It was almost as if Seonghwa didn’t notice the drop in Hongjoong’s mood. Damn was that boy oblivious. He snatched his newsy cap from Hongjoong’s hand, situating it back snug against the waves of his hair, chiming his bell one final time before pedaling down to the next street, Seonghwa simultaneously tossing the newspapers at each doorstep and moving father until he was merely over the small hill, disappearing from view.

Hongjoong gives a small smile before fetching the newspaper that he had tucked under his arm, unfolding it to read the headline. Sure enough, Seonghwa had read the headline correctly, two were dead on the West side of Brooklyn but Hongjoong had noticed something different. In small print, next to the bold of “The New York Times”, it wasn’t the number fifty.

It was now reading as “60¢.” 


End file.
